Maine North Woods access - ?

My wife and I are taking a couple of weeks in May 24 and going up to Maine, lots of adventuring on the way and then the only real "destination" in Maine is Acadia NP. I want to do a slow loop back, and I see that NW Maine / "North Woods" area has a metric shit ton of what appear to be private, gated logging roads but with certain public access being granted for through travel.

It's difficult to ascertain by looking at maps what is gated restricted and what is gated public access. Does anyone have firsthand information, or a solid link to the roads that are accessible for through travel? A lot of the gates are like 2/3 of the way up a road so turning around repeatedly would be a time and fuel consuming process.

My loose plan is heading north on US 1 all the way up, hooking west on 161, and then beginning to explore south through the Allagash Wilderness Waterway area and ultimately wind up around Greenville / Moosehead Lake.

What is the renegade camping situation in there?

Thanks!

 

Everything you need to know. https://northmainewoods.org/

 

Thanks. Yeah, I was hoping for a more boots on the ground assessment but I'll check that out.

 

I have nothing specific but everytime I’ve been up that way I have never had a problem finding open trails.

 

My cousin owns Wilson's on Moosehead Lake, check it out. Their son runs it now & his sister owned Flatlanders Restaurant in Greenville, Never been there though. Last time we went my wife wanted to go East to Bar harbor. I grew up in N. Deering, Me. Love it up there but housing is wicked $$$$. Enjoy!! If you have time & haven't been got to Mt Washington. we took the cog vs driving. We had unlimited visibility that day. Mt Washington resort has the best pancakes I have ever had. I actually had them 2 days in row! Demilo's on the water in Portland is an old cargo ship converted to a restaurant Italian.

 

Yeah there's only three things I've scheduled: Statute of Liberty, Cog RR, and Acadia NP. The rest is all spontaneous with renegade camping. I'll check your family's place out and probably those pancakes too!! Thanks.

 

To finish this thread off - I did a day of banging around in the North Woods heading north east from Greenville.

Here is the full trip report / pics: https://meefzah.smugmug.com/May-2024-New-England-region-trip

The TLDR North Woods only summary is this:

We started with breakfast at Kelley's Landing at Greenville, which was really good. Sorry @LCJ77 - Wilson's didn't open for over 2 hours and we didn't want to wait.



I got a DeLorme Gazetteer to help route me. I found it mostly accurate. Roads were marked about half the time with signs.

There were no entry stations on the routes we took.

Traffic was light (Sunday, no logging trucks).

I didn't find the roads to be terribly scenic but they were "okay" with a few cool vistas here and there. They certainly weren't challenging or interesting to drive. Most were really potholed from heavy trucks. Most were really wide and quite dusty. I used 4hi once for a water crossing on a less traveled road but otherwise pretty much any 2wd passenger car could drive 99% of what we did..

A lot of lesser roads were still shut from winter including at Baxter SP and I imagine those ones would be better / more challenging.

There was plenty of camping outside Baxter Park within the confines of the North Woods, and it looked like renegade camping would be no big deal. Bugs were fucking awful. We did not camp despite planning on doing so because we just wanted to move on from the bugs.

I personally wouldn't travel a great distance to go explore the North Woods, but if I was in the area I'd take at least a half day lap up through there.













These last two were outside the NW boundaries near Baxter SP

 

Nice, just seeing this thread now, I love it up there. We just went up for a look at Northern lights, last Friday night. Might be a big group of folks, mostly taco owners spending a week or so in August if your up for another adventure.

 

Nah, it's just too far to justify for a weekend; and it was nice but not really better than a lot of stuff that's closer to me. Thanks though.

 

We will be there for about a week. And ya, depending on what your looking for, there are for sure better places.